Nora Roberts is one of the bestselling authors still writing today. She doesn’t get a lot of serious press because she mainly writes romances. The quality of these is variable, in my opinion. I think that she writes romantic suspense best and her books written under the name JD Robb are excellent, light weight, crime novels. She writes a couple of crime novels each year, a romantic suspense or two, and also one of a trilogy or quartet of novels (there is a theory on the Internet that some of these are ghost written but I have no idea if that is true or whether she is just very prolific). Each set of related books has some sort of a theme which runs through them with each one being a romance as well as contributing to the overall story arc – lately these have been light fantasy novels but the set I am talking about in this post are all related to weddings.
The Bride Quartet, as it is known, contains the novels Vision in White, Bed or Roses, Savor the Moment and Happy Ever After. The books concern a group of four friends all of whom work together in a wedding planning business. In each book they have to overcome something in their own lives in order to live happily ever after with the man of the moment. It’s a framework that this author has used frequently because it is very successful. Over four books you come to know the characters well and the shared background is interesting and allows sub-plots about the various weddings. Obviously, using weddings means that the book have a celebration feeling about them.
These four books are not this author’s best mini-series but they are well crafted for what they are. The wedding business is interesting, if rather alarming to those of us who married a long time ago in cheaper and less flamboyant times, and allows for tension and conflict. Each book features one of the women running the service and they each have a different role – organiser, photographer, caterer and florist. Naturally, the business is successful and each of the women excels in her role. Each of them has their own back story which affects them and means that they struggle to accept and give love, but as these are romance novels it is no spoiler to say that they all reach a happy conclusion.
If you are looking for a light read which is not too challenging then you could do a lot worse than these books. The author is experienced and knows how to craft a satisfying story. The subject matter, combined with romance, means that it is all feel good and warm hearted – and there are times when that is exactly what you want.
Anne Is Reading 